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Sunday, June 19, 2016

A Literal Translation of an Old English Passage

Copyright to original owners.

Today, we will examine the nuance of an Old
English passage. Deconstructing some aspects of the passage before translating
the vocabulary words, this post hopes to give readers some insight into some of
the hassle Old English presents when attempting to learn the ins and outs of
the language. The following selection is taken from Unit One of Mark Atherton ‘Teach
Yourself’ guide.

Here Edward was consecrated as king at
Winchester on the first Easter day with great honor, and on that year Easter
fell on the third of nones of April. Archebishop Eadsige consecrated him, and
before all the people instructed him well, and for his own need and that of the
people admonished him well. And the priest, Stigand, was blessed as bishop to
the East Angles.

The
translated vocabulary is as follows (bold indicates Old English):

+Eadsige (proper name)

+arcebisceop (archbishop)

+hine (him)

+halgade (hallowed)

+and (and)

+toforan (before)

+eallum (all)

+þam (the)

+folce (people)

+wel (well)

+lӕrde (instructed; past tense)

+and to his (and to his)

+agenre (own)

+neode (need)

+ealles (of-all)

+manude (admonished; past tense)

+preost (priest)

+wӕs (was)

+gebletsad (blessed)

+bisceope (bishop)

+eastenglum (East Angles)

Right
off the bat, we see some eerily similarities between the Old English words and
our own version of English. The Old English equivalents of ‘priest’ ‘was’ ‘bishop’
‘well’ and, well, ‘and’ all are easily identifiable even in their Old English
variants. Then there is words like ‘gebletsad’
which without its ‘-ge’ prefix reads remarkably similar to the contemporary ‘blessed.’
All though but minor examples of the manner in which Old English permeates the
language even today, I think enterprising individuals who want to try their
hand at a rough translation, will find that aspects of the passage feel
remarkable homily despite the advanced age.

While
Old English still being a whole new language to learn, with certain rules and
spellings and pronunciations to keep in mind, it is not an entire world apart
from modern English speakers. Speaking it, yes, will require some training and
struggle, but merely engaging in the text, recognizing words, prefixes and
suffixes, will help one quite a bit in decoding what specific passages hint
toward; after all, carefully pondering a passage and translating word-for-word
may not be the most fun way to learn, but it is better than nothing at all.

So, to conclude, I
suppose you can consider this a lengthy version of a “Notes” post, but I feel
it is a bit of a step up from that, since, it aims to do a bit more than
recite. This was a basic outline of the kind of material which I subject myself
to in an effort to become more familiar with Old English. As we have seen, it
is not all ghosts and lingual goblins, but it is neither far from easy.